Nineteen years ago, Canadianborn Alex Kogler retired from the hard-hitting life of a professional hockey player and made a sweet transition to life as a doughnut baker. Now instead of waking up for dawn practice, Kogler spends the wee hours of every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning making doughnuts in his tiny shop, Butler’s Colonial Donut House in Westport, Massachusetts. He has to start early to keep up with the demands of his customers, who come especially for his light-as-air yeast doughnuts, which are fried to a golden brown, filled with freshly whipped real cream (and some with a bit of black raspberry jam), and then sprinkled with sugar. Just one more, the customers keep telling him…..

A clunky machine cuts tender dough. The Duchess cutter divides the raised doughnut dough into pieces of equal weight. Kogler then shapes the cut dough into buns and “long johns” by hand.

“Nobody uses real whipped cream anymore, but we do,” says Alex Kogler when asked to explain the popularity of his raised doughnuts. He makes plenty of other delicious varieties year-round, but Kogler has to stop making the cream-filled ones in the hot summer months.

Finished with a sprinkling of sugar. The whipped cream filled doughnuts don’t last long at Butler’s. The tiny shop offers a variety of doughnuts, but none as popular as these.